Entropy

The idea that the second law of thermodynamics or "entropy law" is a
law of disorder (or that dynamically ordered states are "infinitely
improbable") is due to Boltzmann's view of the second law.

In
particular, it was his attempt to reduce it to a stochastic collision
function, or law of probability following from the random collisions of
mechanical particles. Following Maxwell, Boltzmann modeled gas molecules
as colliding billiard balls in a box, noting that with each collision
nonequilibrium velocity distributions (groups of molecules moving at the
same speed and in the same direction) would become increasingly
disordered leading to a final state of macroscopic uniformity and
maximum microscopic disorder or the state of maximum entropy (where the
macroscopic uniformity corresponds to the obliteration of all field
potentials or gradients)

The second law, he argued, was thus
simply the result of the fact that in a world of mechanically colliding
particles disordered states are the most probable.

Because there are so
many more possible disordered states than ordered ones, a system will
almost always be found either in the state of maximum disorder – the
macrostate with the greatest number of accessible microstates such as a
gas in a box at equilibrium – or moving towards it.

A dynamically
ordered state, one with molecules moving "at the same speed and in the
same direction", Boltzmann concluded, is thus "the most improbable case
conceivable... an infinitely improbable configuration of energy."

“It’s still too early to tell how the debate over ‘increased interdependence’ will turn out,” concluded the Wall Street Journal. “But the concept plainly has far more minuses [disorders] than it seemed to have in the 1960s—and that may require more thought.” As it turns out, the Second Law of Thermodynamics gives us an insight into the situation.

Imagine a cube made of a transparent material whose volume is 250 cubic feet, with 250 compartments filled with liquids of different colors. What happens if we make a pinhole on each side of the compartments? The individual molecules, finding additional degrees of freedom, will start to move around within a larger volume. The entropy of the system will increase. When the entropy of a system increases, so does our ignorance about the system. Before, we knew that a green molecule was in the green compartment. Now it can be in any compartment.

With the passage of time, our ignorance about the system increases as the mixing process goes on. And if the size of the pinhole opening within the compartments should widen, the molecules will find more degrees of freedom to roam around, further increasing our ignorance—uncertainty—about the system.

The same principle applies to world affairs. Suppose those compartments were national boundaries. As barriers between nations begin to fall, each constituent (molecule) finds more degrees of freedom to move around in a larger volume. In our case, the molecules can be anything: people, ideologies, knowledge, religions, raw materials, goods, diseases, chemicals, information (or misinformation), cults, factories, jobs, terrorism, technology, money, food, drugs, or weapons. It is crucial to realize that once physical barriers fall, it becomes a practical impossibility to “control” the types of things that cross national boundaries.

Roughly speaking, you could think about ‘being’ as what is currently, and ‘becoming’ as how that’s going to transform - but its more than how its going to transform, because its also how it should transform.

It seems to me that when you’re wrestling with the fundamental questions
of your life, you have to wrestle with both of those propositions: you
have to figure out, what it is that’s here and now, and where you are,
and what you are; and then you have to figure out what you’re going to
do about that. And hypothetically […] it seems that people are generally
motivated to attempt to make it better. And so then you have to figure
out what constitutes ‘better.’ And that means you’re into the domain of
values.

Not only is there an impetus to make it better, there’s also the fact
that while you’re trying to make things better, you’re also fighting
against entropy itself - the tendency of complex things to fall apart -
and so it requires energy to make things better; it even requires energy
just to keep things the way they are. So in some sense, life is an
uphill battle, because you’re pushing against great forces that act in
opposition to your existence.

In some sense, that’s the fundamental basis of existential thinking. The
existentialists make the claim that existence itself is a problem, and
so that means that in some sense psychopathology is built right in to
the nature of human existence, and its partly because we’re limited -
and we suffer because of that - [...] and we’re working against forces
that are in many ways greater than we are and that are pushing in the
opposite direction.

Life is being and becoming, and its also the problem of being and
becoming. And that’s what you’re stuck with. It’s useful to know what
you’re stuck with, because it stops you from being isolated - because
everybody’s also stuck with that - and it also makes you understand that
if you have a problem, that doesn’t necessarily mean there’s something
wrong with you, it’s just that you’re alive - and that’s a problem!

People are inclined to think that life was operating optimally you’d be
happy. I think that’s an unreasonable hope in some ways, because life
itself is so complicated - because of its fundamental essence - that the
idea that you can exist in some optimised state on a constant basis is …
well, that’s just not how it is.

When you mature, and become wiser, you have to take into account what
the actual limitations are, and then you have to figure out a way that
you can exist […] while taking that into account.